1. Field of the Invention
This application relates to a system and a method for predicting when a vehicle is going to experience a fault and repairing and/or maintaining the vehicle in response to the fault prediction. These systems and methods are applicable to any organization that maintains a fleet of vehicles or a group of similar machines or instrumentalities.
2. Description of Related Art
Maintenance and repair of a vehicle is a general concern to an owner or operator of a vehicle. Cost of labor and components, downtime, productivity, performance, and efficiency, among other factors, all impact the ability of a vehicle to perform as it is designed. Accordingly, maintenance systems have arisen in an attempt to reign in vehicle maintenance costs, reduce downtime, and increase productivity.
Some maintenance systems have been premised on performing routine maintenance at predetermined mileage intervals or periodic time intervals. Still others provide warning alerts when a part on a vehicle has broken down. However, a typical problem with conventional maintenance systems is that they have generally been reactive in nature and have not generally not taken into account the actual causes, reasons, or indications of specific breakdowns and faults in vehicles. Maintenance has usually not been performed on a vehicle until the vehicle is broken down, resulting in excessive downtime of the vehicle and, potentially, additional costs and repairs that were caused because of the breakdown.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for systems and methods for identifying when vehicles are going to breakdown or experience faults and proactively maintaining and repairing the vehicles before the breakdowns and faults occur.